Friday, January 17, 2014

Ten Days in a Mad-House

Victorian American journalist Nellie Bly was asked by the New York
World to “go undercover”
(though it was not known as such) as an indigent inmate of
Blackwell's Island insane asylum. She seems to have been slightly
more concerned with her abilities to feign insanity than worried
about not getting out, nor about the deprivations and horrors she
might suffer. She, indeed, found it disgracefully easy to be
denounced as mad and then incarcerated. This is perhaps the more
fascinating section of her account, published by Wild Side Press, to
modern readers who are no doubt aware generally of the barbarity
involved in treating mental patients in “olden times.” Though
Bly did not perhaps intend it, her account still reverberates with
questions on the definition of insanity. If all it took in 1887 to
be suspected insane by laymen was to say aloud that everyone around
one seems crazy, then I think half the world would now be
incarcerated. “Yet strange to say, the more sanely I talked and
acted the crazier I was thought to be by all except one physician”
(9).

Bly started her quest at the Temporary
Home for Females, where she could board for 30 cents a night, though
in retrospect this institution seems uncomfortably close to needing
as much exposure to the general public for neglect and abuse as
Blackwell's Island. As a living place for working women, the
boarders were provided with meals (for which they also paid 30 cents)
and in the evenings, had no choice but to sit (or stand) in a dark
parlor staring into space (some knit but no one seems to read,
probably because there wasn't sufficient light). This environment
would surely induce insanity! Bly felt guilty feigning insanity to
Mrs Caine, a kind woman who volunteered to stay with her during the
night after the rest of the boarders feared for her life because she
seemed crazy. Mrs Caine was gentle, patient, persuasive, and seems
to have been genuinely concerned about Bly. However, group
psychology seemed to take root, as all the other boarders feared and
shunned her.

Bly wondered if she would lose her
reason during this experiment, and it seems obvious to me that the
amount of sleepless nights she got during the undercover operation,
both in the boarding house and in the asylums, explain any irrational
behavior women tipped off for “nervous depression” would have
exhibited—if you weren't crazy before, the lack of sleep would have
seriously damaged your nerves. Bly's writing is by no means
scientific, but she does have a surprising capacity for humor,
especially the way she describes cockroaches falling from the ceiling
of the boarding house onto her pillow.

When the head of the boarding house has
Bly escorted out by policemen, Bly is sent to the court of Judge
Duffy, a man whose good intentions make you feel very sorry for. You
begin to realize how much rested on initial impressions and
appearances; Judge Duffy believes Bly should be treated gently
because she looks like a well-educated lady and that she seems like
“someone's darling.” “Poor girl, I will be good to her, for
she looks like my sister, who is dead” (26). The courtroom
believes Bly when she says she is from Cuba, and the general opinion
is that she has been drugged and abused by a scurrilous lover (!).
The stigmatization of the mentally ill is such that crowds of
bystanders as well as reporters follow Bly wherever she goes, until
she reaches Blackwell's.

The first doctor she has seen
believes she has been drugged with belladonna, but that by no means
convinces him that she is sane. At Bellevue Hospital, Bly finds that
the porters are physically violent and the nurses are rude. The
Irish washerwoman is by far the most compassionate person, but she
asks for pennies from the inmates, perhaps as bribes. The
attitude—which unfortunately persists to this day—is that as she
is living off of charity, she should be grateful for anything she
gets, including disgusting food and inadequate clothing (as I am
reading Jane Eyre at
the moment, this is much the same attitude in Lowood School). The
secoIt nd doctor she sees considers her “a hopeless case.”

Bly occasionally acts in a way we
should consider unprofessional, as when she defends the actions of
the next young, handsome doctor who comes to her bed in the hospital
and throws his arms around her in what she says is a compassionate
way. According to her, because he is handsome and a gentleman, he
can be trusted. Bly worries about Tillie Maynard and Anne Neville,
young women both incarcerated erroneously. However, unlike them, Bly
will be able to leave these experiences behind.

Bly censures the fact that
foreign-language inmates at Blackwell's do not have a chance to tell
their story even when interpreters are available. The conduct of her
first receiving doctor and the nurse is disgraceful, flirting during
her examination. The brutality at Blackwell's is surprising even if
you expect it. The doctors disregard patient complaints. The nurses
are actively sadistic, beating patients and sometimes breaking their
ribs by jumping on them. They verbally abuse and bully them. The
patients are undressed in front of an audience and forced into
freezing cold water, then put to bed without adequate bedclothes and
their hair still wet. It is no wonder that Bly's companions begin to
suffer physically as well as mentally. Bly reasonably notes that if
a fire occurred, because all inmates are locked in their rooms, they
would all be burned alive.

After ten days, Bly is taken out of
Blackwell's and spearheads an investigation into the conditions. It
is remarkable that she is even believed, considering that the asylum
gets a tip off an hour before Bly and her patrons come to investigate
the conditions.

I know from history that Bly's expose
made a difference, but cynically it's hard to wonder whether abuses
like this will always go on in situations of unequal power.